Quote Originally Posted by Martin View Post
great information... thanks for all that! having pagers in the early 90's was definitely ahead of its time... i remember that catching on in the late 90's but don't remember any place with them around '91. on top of that, i didn't even know devices that could track when a table is cleared even existed. the first time we made it to ted's was around 2000 and we waited around an hour to get a table... throughout the whole experience we could tell that the place had a tight system in place.
The software to do the table control was, well, quite bespoke. Ted always had excellent ideas on what he wanted to see in it, so it was a challenge to keep it running while simultaneously adding new features. It ran from an early production touchscreen at the greeter station, had the ability to move tables together to accommodate large groups, and would alert the server when one of their tables was cleared and another group had been sat. And that was just the tip of the iceberg so to speak.. it tied into the ordering and back of house as well. The turn rate was most likely one of the highest in the nation at the time.